A school kicked off the year with a solid plan. Teachers unpacked their data, grouped students by need, and shifted the ELA block to include small-group instruction. By week four, half the kids who’d started below benchmark had already caught up. But some wanted to go back to the way things were.
That moment says a lot about how we treat Tier 1 instruction. Even when it works, it’s not always easy to stick with it.
There’s still a widespread assumption that Tier 1 means whole-group, same-for-everyone instruction. But that’s not what the model calls for—and it’s not what students need. Strong Tier 1 instruction is meant to prevent the need for intervention by meeting most students where they are. That doesn’t mean everyone gets the same lesson. It means instruction is designed from the beginning to respond to real skill-level data.
Designing Instruction for Who’s Actually in the Room
Universal screeners aren’t just a tool for flagging students for intervention later on. They’re a guide for shaping the first wave of instruction. If a grade level has 60% of students below benchmark, it’s not realistic—or sustainable—to try to intervene with that many kids. You have to start with Tier 1.
The research is clear: students learn more, and faster, when instruction is matched to their current level and delivered in small, skill-based groups (McEvoy, 2024). That’s true for all students, even our multilingual learners or those with learning disabilities. If the skill needed is the same, the group should be the same.
Getting that kind of instruction in place takes more than a good program. It takes time, people, and a willingness to rethink the way classrooms are organized. It also takes leadership that stays focused on student outcomes, even when the change feels uncomfortable.
There are schools pulling this off—not because they’ve found the perfect resource, but because they’ve committed to doing what works. That sometimes means training every available adult to support reading instruction. It means making time for teams to meet, looking at real data, and adjusting based on what students actually need—not what the schedule says.
When Tier 1 works, fewer students fall behind. Fewer need intervention. That’s the goal. Not hoops, not labels, not wait-and-see. Just solid instruction from the start. If you want to hear how this plays out in real schools—and why it’s worth rethinking how we define core instruction—listen to Keely Keller’s conversation with Dr. Stephanie Stollar on Teaching Channel Talks.
